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What you can't see is we're under siege

Okay what the heck does that mean? Before the last 12 hours the word only brought to mind Tsunami Tom which turned out to be Toonami Tom which is this weird Cartoon Network guy.

Weird. And definitely not what the news is talking about.

When I first heard the news I can't say that I was scared. I think surprised would be a better word. Like..."Oh yeah, those happen here. Cool". And then I didn't know what to do or what to think. I went down to Alyssa's room and told her we were going to be KILLED by a massive TSUNAMI. She told me she wanted to cut her hair. It was very anticlimactic. But to her defense, there was a tsunami warning here last January, and nothing really came of it. (Which -spoiler alert- is what happened this year.) I sent my mom a text, since it was 2:30 am her time. I though about calling her but there wasn't really any danger yet, and I have a hard time believing bad things are ever going to happen to me. It's a gift. And a curse.At this point there's a little bit of noise as word starts spreading that there's a tsunami watch--mostly because there are so many students here from Japan who are worried about their families. Gratefully every Japanese person I know has been able to contact their family and everyone that they know of is safe-thank heavens!After about an hour the watch turned to a warning (I love the careful word choice. I guess 'warning' sounds more ominous than 'watch'. But only if you think about it. Which sometimes just confuses me.) and they started sounding the sirens. If you live in Florida and you're accustomed to the lighting alarms that go off at parks, you can imagine what the sirens sounded like. Just think of the lightning alarm noise, take it up about four pitches, and make it eighteen times louder. They started going off regularly every hour after this. Of course, this only created more panic, mayhem, and ruckus. Girls started running around like ants when you step on the ant hole. Yelling and screaming and such. Madison and I ran down the hallway jumping and whooping and fist pumping like champs. IT WAS A WARNING. IT WAS LEGIT. ...Except it wasn't. That was when I realized that tsunamis suck. They are

VERY

BORING.

Granted, I did grow up with hurricanes. So you have a few days to prepare, get last minute groceries, put up shutters, and hide your trampolines. Then you hunker down and make tortillas or scrapbook or something. Granted, there were quite a number of people who tried to do this. The gas station half a mile away had a line backed up to the school. Girls in my dorm were packing their bags (sorry, but where were they going?! Where are you gonna evacuate to honey??) and filling up empty water bottles. But it wasn't exciting. There was no storm, no rain to play in, no heavy winds, nada.

Lame.

So we went to run errands (harass boys for our hijacked ipods) and watched a movie and cut dear Alyssa's hair. I decided to clean my room because someone walked by my open door, looked at the corner, and asked if I was trying to pack to leave. Ha! No, I just like to let my clothes be free. Okay, granted it did look like a hurricane hit.

So I cleaned it up. And it was beautiful.

I wasn't sure what to do after that. It was about 1:30, so I decided to try and sleep. Dumb idea, thanks to the sirens. I google'd tsunamis and realized that even though I'd minimized the threat of danger, it was pretty much even less dangerous. Except I found this really cool thing called a drawback- which is like a normal wave sucking in before it pushes out another one- where the water recedes a lot and you can see the ocean floor without any water on it. People die the most there because they run out to look at it or pick up fish and then the tsunami comes and they can't run away fast enough. Honestly, that is something I used to dream about as a kid (the ocean floor thing, not people dying) and it reminds me of the story about the seven Asian brothers who could swallow the sea.

So I sent my mom another text telling her to call me whenever she got up and I got ready for bed. She called me about five minutes later. I'm not sure if I was coherent at this point, because I was tired and sleep deprived. Anyway, after I talked to her I tried to sleep. Except that I couldn't because there were tons of girls sleeping in my hallway staring at me through the vents on my door. Well maybe they weren't I was just paranoid. So I stapled a blanket to my door and went to sleep.

At four my time, the continental U.S. realized what was going on. I woke up to my Owl City ringtone (which is straight up OBNOXIOUS after an hour and a half of sleep)from someone calling me to see if I was okay. And I love this person. But she seemed surprised to hear that I was asleep and not evacuating. Bless her heart. Um...I live on an island. Where am I going to evacuate to? I'm pretty sure I'm in greater danger of falling off a cliff then getting killed by a tsunami that's hitting the other side of the island. A few more people called/texted me, which I appreciate, because this is the most action my phone's seen since my birthday.

I asked my mom what was going on (because even half a world away she still is more informed than me) and found that one wave has hit already and it was a foot tall.

Fail.

Good thing I wasn't too excited. It was a disappointment. I mean, not really because I didn't actually want anyone to get hurt or killed. But still. Fail.

The news is STILL trying to make it sound like a big deal. But it's not.

But I sincerely appreciate everyone who've checked up on me, even if it's just through facebook.

And I have all day weekend to sleep, since classes are canceled. And everyone's safe and dry. So even now, life in Hawaii is still great as ever.